Tag: rural

As a writer and introvert, one of my greatest quests over this year of travel is to find quiet places to get away to where I can write, read, and be—without breaking the bank. Here are five places I found during my time in Asia that gave me the space I needed to write, seek silence, and find inspiration.

I stayed at Jirye Art Village outside of Andong, South Korea, for over a week last summer, and it was just the quiet getaway I needed after weeks in the bustling metropolis of Seoul.

The Jirye Art Village is comprised of a series of historical buildings that were rescued from demolition by Korean poet Kim Won-gil. The buildings, built circa 1660, belonged to his family, and in 1990, when they were threatened by a dam being built nearby, Kim managed to get permission to move 10 buildings 200 meters up the mountains to their current position.

There’s something about the pace of life in Seoul that is amazing and ever-changing–but also exhausting and perhaps, for some, crushing. I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends about Korea’s rapid modernization, and one thing that has come of it is a 빨리빨리 (“hurry, hurry” or “quickly, quickly”) culture.

And it’s exactly that hurriedness that I wanted to escape. So I went to about the most rural (시골), most inaccessible (but still accessible) place you could get to in Korea without taking a boat or plane: Jindo Island.